PHIL JAMISON
Founding coordinator of Old-Time Music & Dance Week, Phil is nationally-known as a dance caller, musician, and flatfoot dancer. Since the early 1970s he has been calling dances and performing and teaching at music festivals and dance events throughout the U.S. and overseas, including thirty years as a member of the Green Grass Cloggers. His flatfoot dancing was featured in the film, Songcatcher, for which he also served as Traditional Dance consultant. From 1982 through 2004, he toured and played guitar with Ralph Blizard and the New Southern Ramblers. He also plays fiddle and banjo. He has done extensive research in the area of Appalachian dance, and has published many articles on traditional dance in The Old-Time Herald. Phil teaches mathematics and Appalachian music at Warren Wilson College, where he has also hosted Dare to be Square!, a weekend workshop for square dance callers. In 2008, Phil became the twelfth recipient of the Gathering’s Master Music Maker Award for lifetime achievement.
www.myspace.com/newsouthernramblers

BRUCE GREENE
Bruce Greene is best known for preserving and playing the fiddle music of Kentucky. As a young man, he traveled throughout the state collecting and learning from the last generation of traditional fiddlers there, some born as far back as the 1880s. Bruce apprenticed with a number of older fiddlers including Hiram Stamper, the family of John Salyer, Manon Campbell, Gusty Wallace, and Jim Bowles, learning their archaic repertoires and bowing techniques. Since the late 1970s, Bruce has lived in western North Carolina with his family, where he has continued to learn from local traditional musicians. He has taught at Swannanoa, Augusta, the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, and Mars Hill, and he has been invited as a master fiddler to numerous other events. In addition to fiddling, Bruce has studied banjo with the Helton family of eastern Kentucky, and he sings with his partner, Loy McWhirter. www.brucegreene.net

DIRK POWELL
Dirk Powell learned banjo and fiddle from his grandfather in Kentucky as a teenager, which grounded him in the Appalachian traditions, but he has become one of the preeminent traditional American musicians of his generation in a variety of styles. His extensive performing, recording, and film work includes collaborations with artists such as Ralph Stanley, Jack White, Joan Baez, Levon Helm, Loretta Lynn, Linda Ronstadt, Sting, T-Bone Burnett, Anthony Minghella, Spike Lee and others. He was featured as part of “The Great High Mountain Tour,” focusing on his multifaceted involvement with the Academy Award-winning film Cold Mountain, for which he acted on screen, arranged traditional material, and served as on-set musical advisor and consultant. His powerful performances of Appalachian music with The Dirk Powell Band and Cajun music with Balfa Toujours have inspired audiences across the globe in a wide variety of venues, and he recently completed a world tour with Joan Baez. Dirk was on staff at the first Swannanoa Old-Time Music and Dance Week in 1992, and we welcome him back for the twentieth. www.dirkpowell.org

PAUL BROWN
Paul Brown has been hooked on traditional southern music since early childhood, when he started picking up songs his mother had learned as a kid in piedmont Virginia. Paul took up banjo at age ten, and fiddle a bit later. His playing bears influences of the North Carolina and Virginia masters he sought out as a young adult, and he loves to share what he learned from these memorable players. He also loves dancing and playing fiddle and banjo for square dances. Paul has appeared at camps and festivals around the U.S. since the early 1970s. He’s recorded and produced highly-regarded traditional music albums, and won numerous banjo and fiddle contests. He currently plays with The Mostly Mountain Boys. www.brownpaul.net

PAUL KOVAC
Singer, multi-instrumentalist, and scholar of American country music, Paul Kovac has been playing old-time and bluegrass music on guitar, mandolin, and banjo since he was a teen. Over the years, he has performed with a long list of musicians, including old-time with Dirk Powell and Rick Good, and bluegrass with Bill Monroe and Hazel Dickens. He has accompanied fiddlers Chubby Wise, Art Stamper, and Vassar Clements, and played dance music with Critton Hollow String Band and the Fiddle Puppets. In 1993, Paul wrote and produced the instructional DVD, Learn to Play Guitar with Roy Clark and Paul Kovac. He has been on staff at numerous music and dance camps, and he coordinated the Bluegrass Week at the Augusta Heritage Center from 1996 to 2007. When not playing music, Paul grows Christmas trees and blueberries and makes maple syrup on his farm in Chardon, Ohio.

JOHN HERRMANN
John has been traveling the world playing old-time music for over thirty years. He plays fiddle with the New Southern Ramblers, but he has performed with many bands including the Henrie Brothers (1st place Galax, 1976), Critton Hollow, the Wandering Ramblers, One-Eyed Dog and the Rockinghams. Equally adept on banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and bass, he is known as the “Father of Old-Time Music” in Japan(!), and the originator of the ‘slow jam.’ John has been on staff at numerous music camps from coast to coast. He lives in Asheville, NC. www.myspace.com/newsouthernramblers

RAYNA GELLERT
Rayna Gellert grew up in a musical family, and has spent most her life immersed in the sounds of rural stringband music. After honing her fiddle skills at jam sessions and square dances, Rayna fell into a life of traveling and performing. Her fiddle albums are widely celebrated in the old-time music community, and she has recorded with a host of musicians in a variety of styles – including Robyn Hitchcock, Tyler Ramsey, Sara Watkins, Loudon Wainwright III, John Paul Jones, and Toubab Krewe. From 2003 through 2008, Rayna was a member of the acclaimed stringband, Uncle Earl, with whom she released two albums on Rounder Records. In addition to teaching an occasional fiddle workshop, she currently performs with Abigail Washburn, Scott Miller, and Toubab Krewe.
www.myspace.com/raynagellert

JOHN HOLLANDSWORTH
A native of Christiansburg in southwest Virginia, John grew up listening to friends and relatives play stringed instruments, and he developed his own autoharp style incorporating both chromatic and diatonic techniques. John has performed and led workshops at the Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering, the Willamette Valley Autoharp Gathering, Sore Fingers Summer School, Augusta, the John C. Campbell Folk School, and elsewhere. John has served as editor of the “Interaction Lesson” feature in Autoharp Quarterly magazine, and in 1991, he became the first champion of the prestigious Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering Competition. In his native region, where there are many local fiddlers’ conventions, John is well-known for his autoharp playing. He has been named the “Best All-Around Performer” of the Galax Old Fiddlers’ Convention three times, being the only autoharp player ever to win this recognition. In 2010, John was inducted into the Autoharp Hall of Fame. www.blueridgeautoharps.com

TERRI McMURRAY
Terri McMurray started playing ukulele in her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin when she was about eight years old. Later, she took up guitar and old-time banjo. She moved to North Carolina in 1982 to be near some of the great old-time fiddle and banjo players, and spent a lot of time learning banjo from Tommy Jarrell and Dix Freeman. Terri was a founding member of the Old Hollow String Band (with Kirk Sutphin, Riley Baugus, Wayne Sutphin, and Will McIntyre), and currently plays with Paul Brown and John Schwab in the Mostly Mountain Boys. She has been on staff at many music and dance camps across the US. Terri lives in Winston-Salem, NC, where she teaches physics and chemistry at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.